Mr. Chamberlain was a man of whom the nation was proud, and had a right
to be proud. He was a good fighter and an unwearied worker, and he spent
himself ungrudgingly in the service of his country. Above all things, he
had that quality of vigour and daring which endears itself, and always
will endear itself, to a virile race. He was not for ever counting the
cost of his actions, but would as gaily as any hero of romance throw his
cap over the wall and follow it without a thought of the difficulties
and dangers that might confront him on the other side.
No one has ever asserted that Mr. Chamberlain left his comrades in the
lurch, failed to support a friend in a tight place, or accepted help
from others and then was careless about helping them in return or making
them acknowledgment for what they had done. Remember that it is very
rare in the case of a public man to find so total an absence of the
complaint of ingratitude. The accusation of ingratitude, indeed, may be
well described as the commonest of all those brought against the great
by the small. "He was willing enough to take help from me when he needed
it; now he has raised himself, the humble ladder is kicked down or else
its existence is utterly ignored.
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